For more on this fascinating topic:
Read the Atlantic article Duplitectural Marvels: Exploring China’s Replica Western Cities
Listen to aninterview of Bianca Bosker by Chris Gondek of Heronandcrane on Portland State’s KPSU.

Saturday, April 132:00 p.m.
Head over to the Museum of Making Music in Carlsbad, California for “Sincerely, Ukulele,” featuring Jim Tranquada’s book talk on The ‘Ukulele: A History, followed by a performance by ‘ukulele artist Brittni Paiva. For details and to purchase tickets, click here.

11:00 a.m.
“Ukiyo-e Pictures and the World of the Pleasure Quarters”Julie Nelson Davis, associate professor in the Department of the History of Art, University of Pennsylvania, and author of Utamaro and the Spectacle of Beauty.

Wednesday, April 245:30 p.m.Anwei Law will sign her monumental work, Kalaupapa: A Collective Memory, at Kalele Bookstore & Divine Expressions in the heart of Kaunakakai, Moloka‘i. Currently a resident of Seneca Falls, NY, where she works as the international coordinator of IDEA, she will be visiting Hawai‘i during most of May–watch for a post on next month’s events.

Editor Masako Ikeda will be attending. Please visit us in the exhibit hall, where we will be offering a 20% discount and free shipping in the U.S. (Free shipping applies only to orders placed at the conference.)

Like this:

Lu Xun (1881–1936), arguably twentieth-century China’s greatest writer, is commonly cast in the mold of a radical iconoclast who vehemently rejected traditional culture. The contradictions and ambivalence so central to his writings, however, are often overlooked. Challenging conventional depictions, Literary Remains: Death, Trauma, and Lu Xun’s Refusal to Mourn, by Eileen J. Cheng, captures Lu Xun’s disenchantment with modernity and his transformative engagements with traditional literary conventions in his “modern” experimental works. Lurking behind the ambiguity at the heart of his writings are larger questions on the effects of cultural exchange, accommodation, and transformation that Lu Xun grappled with as a writer: How can a culture estranged from its vanishing traditions come to terms with its past? How can a culture, severed from its roots and alienated from the foreign conventions it appropriates, conceptualize its own present and future?

“Eileen Cheng’s study explores Lu Xun’s complex interaction with the past through sophisticated and nuanced analyses of a large corpus of his writings. With its solid textual scholarship and original and illuminating interpretations, her work constitutes an important contribution to Lu Xun studies.” —Kirk Denton, Ohio State University